Budget update – where is the hard data?

The Treasurer’s so-called “Progress Report” on budget savings provides about as much information as an ELS report card, and it not worth the paper it is written on.

This is a budget update without any hard data or numbers to back it up.

The Treasurer Mr Aird needs to explain why there aren’t any year to date details in regards to savings, especially in the areas of employment management and the efficiency dividends which are the two big ticket items Mr Aird hopes to save on this year.

Mr Aird might claim that he is on track to meet his targets, but the absence of hard data in this report and its replacement by ticks, crosses, yin and yangs and unquantifiable words such as “significant” suggest otherwise.

Especially when a “tick” doesn’t mean that a saving has been completed, but rather that “strategies have been implemented to achieve the savings target.”

The lack of detail in this report strongly suggests that the Labor Government is falling well short of its self-imposed savings targets, which is hardly surprising given the amount of unbudgeted spending it has engaged in since the budget.Peter Gutwein MP Shadow Treasurer

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